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A review by tesslw
The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
TWs; child abuse, animal abuse, animal death, kidnapping, neglect, murder
I am critically aware that my opinion on this book is very much the minority as I know so many people absolutely loved this book… however, for me this was probably the biggest reading disappointment of the year.
This book is a story of a child gone missing - vanished during a day out at the lake, and a sister (Dee) who has sworn to find her. It’s also the story of Ted, who lives in a house on Needless Street (the (the last house, in fact - fancy that!). Ted is painted as a bit of an odd-ball and a hermit, but he loves his cat, Olivia, and his young daughter, Lauren who live with him.
I actually really enjoyed the first third (or maybe even half?) of this - which also seems to stand at odds with popular opinion. There are multiple POVs, the narrative is very fragmented and it’s all incredibly ambiguous; all these things speak to me, so I was all on board. However from here, it all fell apart. The narratives became increasingly monotone and grating, the pacing was way off - and I had one REALLY big issue that I just couldn't get past, but I’ll have to include it in a spoiler flagged section as it really is integral to the plot and I can’t mention it without ruining basically the whole book. Only that I found it largely unhelpful, undermining and sensationalist.
SPOILER INCOMING!
So. The main ‘twist’ being that Ted, the main antagonist, suffers from DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder; previously referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder) really did not sit right with me. I have a serious issue with writers using mental health disorders that they do not suffer from themselves (even if they have ‘read all about them!!’) as plot devices; especially when the plot involves them being the main character trait of the villain in a thriller / horror novel? It’s 2022, can we please stop doing this now. Simultaneously fetishizing complex mental and psychological disorders whilst simultaneously villainising those who actually experience and inhabit them is so unhelpful and does not contribute to ‘mental health awareness’, but rather to the stigma and fear around them.
Whilst Ward tries to justify this use of DID within the plot by stating in an authors note that she essentially realised that she wanted to write Ted as having this diagnosis after stumbling across a video (having never heard of the disorder before) of someone explaining their experiences with it. In this moment she realised that all the characters she had been trying to write were voices from one body, and this fit for Ted because she realised he didn’t seem like a murderer because she regularly ‘found pockets of compassion for him’. Whilst it is clear that she has since done a significant amount of reading and had conversations with individuals with lived experiences, the whole thing just seemed disingenuous and doesn’t sit right with me.
I’m glad to have read it so I can join in with conversations about it but I don’t believe I’ll be reading anything else from this author unfortunately!
I am critically aware that my opinion on this book is very much the minority as I know so many people absolutely loved this book… however, for me this was probably the biggest reading disappointment of the year.
This book is a story of a child gone missing - vanished during a day out at the lake, and a sister (Dee) who has sworn to find her. It’s also the story of Ted, who lives in a house on Needless Street (the (the last house, in fact - fancy that!). Ted is painted as a bit of an odd-ball and a hermit, but he loves his cat, Olivia, and his young daughter, Lauren who live with him.
I actually really enjoyed the first third (or maybe even half?) of this - which also seems to stand at odds with popular opinion. There are multiple POVs, the narrative is very fragmented and it’s all incredibly ambiguous; all these things speak to me, so I was all on board. However from here, it all fell apart. The narratives became increasingly monotone and grating, the pacing was way off - and I had one REALLY big issue that I just couldn't get past, but I’ll have to include it in a spoiler flagged section as it really is integral to the plot and I can’t mention it without ruining basically the whole book. Only that I found it largely unhelpful, undermining and sensationalist.
SPOILER INCOMING!
Whilst Ward tries to justify this use of DID within the plot by stating in an authors note that she essentially realised that she wanted to write Ted as having this diagnosis after stumbling across a video (having never heard of the disorder before) of someone explaining their experiences with it. In this moment she realised that all the characters she had been trying to write were voices from one body, and this fit for Ted because she realised he didn’t seem like a murderer because she regularly ‘found pockets of compassion for him’. Whilst it is clear that she has since done a significant amount of reading and had conversations with individuals with lived experiences, the whole thing just seemed disingenuous and doesn’t sit right with me.
I’m glad to have read it so I can join in with conversations about it but I don’t believe I’ll be reading anything else from this author unfortunately!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Moderate: Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Child abuse, Abandonment, Animal cruelty, and Murder